Drilling through to different report formats

The settings in the drill through definition determine the format in which users see the report results.

For example, the users may see the reports in IBM® Cognos® Viewer as an HTML Web page, or the reports may open in IBM Cognos Query Studio, IBM Cognos PowerPlay® Studio, or IBM Cognos Analysis Studio. If your users have PowerPlay Studio, then they may also see the default view of a PowerCube.

Reports can be opened as HTML pages, or as PDF, XML, CSV, or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software formats. When you define a drill through path, you can choose the output format. This can be useful if the expected use of the target report is something other than online viewing. If the report will be printed, output it as PDF; if it will be exported to Excel for further processing, output it as Excel or CSV, and so on.

To run reports, or drill to targets that run reports in the delimited text (CSV), PDF, Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (XLS), or XML output formats, users require the generate output capability for the specific format.

If you define a drill through path to a report that is created in Analysis Studio, PowerPlay Studio, or Query Studio, consumers can open the report in its studio instead of in IBM Cognos Viewer. This can be useful if you expect a consumer to use the drill through target report as the start of an analysis or query session to find more information.

For example, if an application contains a dashboard style report of high-level data, you can define a drill through link to Analysis Studio to investigate items of interest. The Analysis Studio view can then be drilled through to a PDF report for printing.